If anyone wonders how my evening is going, here’s a text I just sent to my Mom, divorced of all context for comedic and dramatic effect: “The fact that Guy Smiley has no teeth in the Google search makes me wonder if the Mandela effect really is true :P”

Thanks to some vigilant friends out there, I have a nearly-complete 87-hour radar loop of #Melissa 's approach to #Jamaica. The loop abruptly ends when the radar is lost (either loss of communication with it or loss of the actual structure). bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/

Echoing colleagues: Think before you (re)post. #Melissa is about to impact a relatively poor part of Jamaica. I doubt we will know the true extent of the devastation for days or weeks. Information vacuums fill with disinformation. Expect a lot of “breaking wind” on SM. Map source: World Bank

Meteorologist Matthew Cappucci flew into the eye of Hurricane Melissa, a Category 5 storm that is projected to hit Jamaica. “It was equal parts scientifically stunning and horrifying from a humanitarian standpoint,” he wrote, flying in one of two groups of hurricane hunters. https://wapo.st/42XpWmq

A surface wind of 198 mph!

With a pressure of 892 mb, Melissa is tied for the 3rd most intense Atlantic basin hurricane on record (by pressure) and if it holds at 185 mph through landfall in Jamaica, it would tie Dorian in 2019 as the strongest landfalling Atlantic basin hurricane on record.

And of course BlueSky decided to only show the first frame of the PNG animation (even though it showed it animating just fine in the post preview). So here's another try at it using a GIF:

I love how the high-frequency satellite imagery from GOES-19 (every minute) shows how the low-level circulation *within* the eye of #Melissa approaches that of a solid body. Notice how the pattern of clouds in the eye doesn't warp but rotates as if it were artwork on a spinning record. (1/3)

“Step 1. A tropical disturbance is created when Mneseus, son of Poseidon and reigning King of Atlantis, strikes a deadly blow to a multi-headed hydra by ramming his trident through its heart“ theonion.com/how-hurrican...

An atmospheric general circulation model you can run on a Python Jupyter notebook?! Heck yeah! Check out this project- both an educational tool for undergraduates/graduate students, and a research tool for scientists interested in idealized climate modeling. journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

I see Frame-Pritchard Alley is heating up again!

Very important point here! A raw ensemble mean can sometimes be very misleading!

I am so excited to announce that one of the radar meteorology courses that I developed with @comet-meted.bsky.social is now available! "Dual-Polarization Fundamentals" picks up where "Weather Radar Fundamentals" left off! learn.meted.ucar.edu#/online-cour... (Register on learn.meted.ucar.edu first.)

The online ghouls who are celebrating and/or justifying the shooting of Charlie Kirk have no idea how much damage they are doing…

Apropos of nothing, I offer an unsolicited academic writing tip. Sentences that begin with some form of "Fig. X shows so-and-so..." are usually unnecessary, as they often just regurgitate what should be in the figure caption. Instead, *interpret* the figures in the text with appropriate references.

Ep 32 of ongoing #Kilauea eruption is in full fountaining mode, and as of the time of this post, there is an amazing, quasi-steady intense "lavanado" ongoing in the shear zone next to the angled lava fountain. Ready-made source of horizontal shear and stretching! www.youtube.com/live/BqmpkUd...

Hey, I know this guy!

Robot meets bollard. Nothing beats the #WorldBollardAssociation

And spinning up an endless stream of lavanadoes on the flanks! It's spectacular!

Be sure to watch until the end!

Unbelievable footage from NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters inside the eye of Hurricane Erin. Simply incredible.

1-minute #GOES19/#GOESEast Visible images revealed mesovortices within the eye of Category 5 Hurricane #Erin.

At a minimum, this new EO looks to seriously add to the bureaucratic processes of federal scientific research and grantmaking, slowing the process and making it more difficult for federal science agencies to spend the budgets they receive. substack.com/@balancedwea...

“Should’ve been gone long ago…”

I am going to go into orbit reading this article. First, @npr.org X is not where you should be looking to see what the NWS issued, see below. Second, trying to avoid the blame game - but the absolute cluelessness of these state and local officials is embarrassing. open.substack.com/pub/balanced...

Why on earth is @npr.org only quoting posts on X in this timeline? Do they think that is the only way people receive weather information and warnings? The weather enterprise has worked tirelessly for decades to avoid this type of nonsense worldview and provide MANY sources to receive these warnings.

249 years ago, our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to secure liberty and self-government against a tyrant king. July 4th is a renewal of our responsibility: to preserve the republic, to guard individual rights, and to nurture an informed and virtuous citizenry. Happy 4th!

What the… Go home ECMWF, you’re drunk…

I've been home for almost week after a crew swap, so I've lost track of the deployments. But, I was in Texas before coming home, and I'm grateful to have been there for IOP12 (to me, our most successful ground deployment yet). #ICECHIP

Pioneering meteorologist Gary England dies at 85 www.oklahoman.com/story/entert...

Some of Trump’s damage is visible right away. But much of it, like gutting science funding, attacking universities, and driving away tourists and foreign students, will haunt us for decades. This chart is just the beginning.

And a big thanks to @storm-spotter-k.bsky.social who did an awesome job driving and helping deploy the PIPS under pressure!

Good day collecting rain and hail size distribution data on a tornadic supercell with large hail for @nsficechip.bsky.social in NE CO today! Had 6 probes between 2 teams (led by @tedmwx.bsky.social and myself). Also got this shot of a tornado near Akron, CO, breaking my nearly 6-yr tornado drought!

Since it came up in Morris' talk, the photo of the 2006 ASP "Challenge of Convective Forecasting" summer colloquium! Young'uns, all... @rschumacher.cloud @adamclarkwx.bsky.social @meteodan.bsky.social @tornatrix.bsky.social @btangywx.bsky.social @kakosiba.bsky.social @nickpbassill.bsky.social etc.

The history books about this period are going to be lit…

🧊 ICECHIP field campaign set to get started! #teamPIPS #PurdueEAPS

The microphysics scheme referenced here has been mainly developed by my long-time collaborator @tedmwx.bsky.social of NSSL and we will be working together to use the disdrometer observations collected during the field phase as “ground truth” to validate these improvements. Looking forward to it!

The shape of the fountain this time is unreal! It’s like someone changed the pressure washer nozzle to “wide”.

Pascal’s Law xkcd.com/3087

“El Reno was an EF-5.”

The hits just keep on coming…

I, for one, am tired of [gestures broadly]. I have grown weary of [points in all directions simultaneously].

Meh. Lithobraking is more efficient. Of course you may not have a functioning spacecraft afterwards, but that’s a small price to pay for the savings in reaction mass!

Artificial intelligence when I was a kid

My career in science would be very different and likely would not even exist #withoutNSF. In particular, an NSF graduate research and later a postdoctoral fellowship were critical to my formative years as a scientist. Now, my CAREER award and two other NSF grants are potentially under threat.

It just checked and @nwspodunk.bsky.social hasn't posted in months. That's how bad the NWS staffing levels are right now.

NEW: US weather forecasting is in worse shape than previously known, with 30 NWS forecast offices missing meteorologists-in-charge and about a dozen offices at risk of no longer serving their communities 24/7. www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/w...

I had to look myself, but yes, this is a real tweet. Somehow, I still have the capacity to be surprised...

Some days you just don’t have it. This was one of those days!